{"id":16739,"date":"2025-12-15T17:17:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/no-2-house-democrat-katherine-clark-gets-primary-challenger\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T17:17:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:17:18","slug":"no-2-house-democrat-katherine-clark-gets-primary-challenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/no-2-house-democrat-katherine-clark-gets-primary-challenger\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark gets primary challenger"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, the No. 2 House Democratic leader, will face a challenge from the left in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Paz, an organizer and former Waltham city councilor, announced his campaign against Clark, the Democratic whip, in <a href=\"https:\/\/m.youtube.com\/watch?v=vTsVLm-JnGU\" target=\"_blank\">a video posted late Sunday night<\/a> emphasizing the need to \u201crebuild\u201d the Democratic party.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m challenging one of the most powerful Democrats in the House because we need new leadership,\u201d said Paz, whose family immigrated from Bolivia. \u201cLet&#8217;s just call it what it is: our Democratic leaders are failing us. They&#8217;re not stopping Trump. They&#8217;re not making life more affordable. They&#8217;re not building a party for the working class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paz, who served for four years on the Waltham City Council, more recently founded Fuerza, a volunteer group that responds to ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Clark is likely to be the highest-ranking House Democrat to face a contested primary. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had faced a run by New York City Council Member Chi Oss\u00e9, but Oss\u00e9 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/12\/05\/chi-osse-ends-bid-to-challenge-jeffries-00679466\" target=\"_blank\">dropped the bid<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Clark ran unopposed in 2024 and had more than $1.8 million in her campaign coffers as of the end of September. A spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, the No. 2 House Democratic leader, will face a challenge from the left in 2026. Jonathan Paz, an organizer and former Waltham city councilor, announced his campaign against Clark, the Democratic whip, in a video posted late Sunday night emphasizing the need to \u201crebuild\u201d the Democratic party. \u201cI\u2019m challenging one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}